


Mittens for Imoen

by cbrachyrhynchos



Series: The Other Bhaalspawn [2]
Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-19
Updated: 2016-03-19
Packaged: 2018-05-27 17:29:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6293365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cbrachyrhynchos/pseuds/cbrachyrhynchos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aerie helps Imoen before the attack on the vampire's lair, with mittens. </p><p>Warn: remembered sexual and physical violence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mittens for Imoen

Imoen sat up in bed and screamed the spell. Her fingers twisted to direct the fatal magical energy out. Instead, the spell popped, fizzled, and gave out a smell of spices and rotten fish. She stared down in horror at the fingers that failed her, they were bound, wrapped in...

Mittens. Her hands were bound in mittens. She flexed her fingers and a raccoon's face winked back at her. A hunched elven woman stood over Imoen, and brushed a hair out of Imoen's eyes. "Shh," the woman said. "You're safe."

"Screw you," Imoen said. She reached for the dagger she kept under her pillow. It was gone. The one on the nightstand was also gone, so was the short sword. "Watcha want you elven cunt? I'll cut your throat and drink your blood." Imoen put the mittens to her mouth and screamed into them. Someone's thick blood filled her mouth, dribbled down her chin, her throat drank. She bit down on the mitten, gradually the phantasmal echo of thick blood was replaced with dyed wool.

"Bitch is getting blood all over my soul," Imoen said. "I want it back, how can I get it back?" She blinked away images of Spellhold, bloody chains, the bed in the dryad's cave and focused on the woman beside her.

"Heya, I'm Imoen. I'm sorry. Who are you?"

"I'm called Aerie. Your brother asked me to sit with you while you're sick."

"I'm not really sick," Imoen said. 

Aerie warmed a cup of broth with a quick cantrip, and passed it into Imoen's hands. "You're not well. Neither is your brother for that matter."

"So, where is he?"

"With his druid, I imagine. What do you think of the mittens? Your brother said you liked purple."

"So you're the gutless, self-absorbed frailty that should be left behind to meditate on the only god who would take her." Imoen bit on the seam of a mitten. It's a shame, the mitten didn't deserve it. Nor did Aerie. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"You're not yourself."

"Maybe you should have knitted me a bridle instead of mittens, unless that's a thing for you, in which case you should have knitted me a bridle instead of mittens." She was going a mile a minute now. 

"Drink your soup Imoen. That will suffice."

Imoen drank. The food gave her strength to push the screaming and nastiness aside for a bit. It made her almost feel like Imoen, in purple mittens, with raccoons on them. She missed feeling like Imoen. Then she felt safe taking off the mittens, and she needed to use the chamber pot. Then she sat down on a stool, too wound up to sleep.

"Your things are in the next room," Aerie said.

"What if we're attacked again?" Imoen blinked away the flash of knives and needles. 

"Minsc and Keldorn are close at hand, and we'd not go into captivity willingly. Did Hero say much about me?"

"Nope."

"Ahh."

"But I kinda figured ya and Hero had something, because he wouldn't let Jaheira badmouth you either. And she can find something to criticize with everyone." Imoen hadn't meant that to hurt, but Aerie turned away for a moment, and turned back.

"I meant did he tell you how I came to Amn?"

"No, I heard you had wings once."

Aerie sat down. "I was netted, chained, and put in a cage with nothing more than a stool and a bucket. For over a year I was on display for a few coppers. A few coppers more when they took my clothes. My wings cramped, then withered, and finally died and rotted. Rather than let me die with them, they were removed." Aerie's hand trembled on the bedspread.

The words ejected from Imoen's mouth before she had time to bite them back. "I lost my fucking soul and you think you can compare your wounds?"

"No, of course not. What they did to you terrifies me. I only meant..."

"Meant what?"

"You've said nothing shocking to me."

The beast within Imoen spoke next, her inheritance from her father. "I can give ya wings little bird. Just give me a knife to tear open the mattress and I can ..."

Imoen bit into her finger to silence the voice. She clamped down until she screamed through her nose. She heard Aerie chant, and then she felt nothing at all for a few moments. Suddenly, her finger was bandaged, her hands were back in the mittens, and she sat dumbfounded in bed.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"Imoen." The elven woman reached out and held Imoen's hand. "We'll make it right for you. We rescued the dryads that Irenicus kept, we'll make it right."

"They lived? I suppose just the entrance collapsed. You rescued them?"

Now the waterworks started flowing. It was baldy's big experiment to see if he had a conscience, if he could see her as more than just a tool. He dissected Khalid in front of her. Between the magical torture, he took her the bedroom with him, with the dryads Ulene, Elyme, and Cania. He taunted her. "Your friend, the druid would have matched darkness with darkness in a futile effort to strike back or die. Your potential is wasted on your morality. I cannot even pity you."

Imoen took a sharp breath in the closeness of the bedroom. Something had played hide and seek with Irenicus magically rooting around her mind all those weeks, and now it clenched a dagger in the darkness. He had not taken all of her, just the parts that couldn't hide and didn't rage. 

"I will unmake him," Imoen said.

"Imoen, are you sure that's a good idea, given..."

"Not murder, silly." Imoen giggled now that she saw the game in front of her. "Everything baldy did because of me, I'll unmake it. Just like tipping an inkwell into Tutor's diary when he got all creepy with me. And if I get to stick a dagger in baldy's back on the way, good on me. He never shoulda let me out where I can get sneaky on him."

Someone knocked on the door, tentatively at first, and then with authority. "Come in," Aerie said. Her brother stepped into the room, and stepped aside for Jaheira to enter. 

"We've found Bodhi, and we've found help. We go in the morning, when she's weakest."

"Fine, but we take twinkles with us," Imoen said and pointed to Aerie.

"Twinkles?" Jaheira said. 

"I don't think that would..." Aeire said.

"Hero, when was the last time ya got any favors from your god, ol' Morninglord?"

"Are you questioning my faith, sister?" That last word had their father's edge to it. His hand drifted toward where he kept the flail. It wasn't there. 

"Bodhi's a vampire! We need to call in some favors from a lot of gods down there, the kind that make deadies go pop. And seriously Hero, I think we're beyond the point of having your girlfriends pull each other's pigtails."

"I always wondered how they found out."

"Heya, it's me, Imoen. Are you really going to go all slayer on your little sister over something that happened when you were twelve?"

Jaheira coughed. "Imoen does raise a good point. Aerie is ... competent for the task in front of us."

"I will help, for this." 

"Very well," Hero said. 

"You all play nice, or I'll start slipping frogs in your pants. I figured out how conjure them directly there. When do we leave?"

"Dawn, will you be ..."

"Droolin myself? Nah, for this I'll be good." Dawn, that's when she starts taking from Irenicus. 

He should have never let her out of her cage.


End file.
